The woefully inept drama “Dracula,” which opened off- Broadway last night, is as close as we get to dinner theater in New York. There’s no prime rib, but plenty of grating cheese.

While it prompts unintended chuckles — when a small plastic bat flies over the set, or when the dying bloodsucker flails about in his cardboard coffin — what it is, mostly, is tedious. Even the great George Hearn, as Dracula nemesis Van Helsing, looks as if he’s counting the minutes until the curtain call.

Indeed, the single most exciting thing about this “Dracula” was the backstage drama during previews, when director Paul Alexander fired Thora Birch, the “Ghost World” star who was his leading lady, after her manager-dad became overly intrusive.

She’s the lucky one.

Adapted by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, this stage version of Bram Stoker’s novel launched the careers of Bela Lugosi and Frank Langella, both of whom played Dracula on Broadway and in Hollywood.

The latest count, Michel Altieri, is unlikely to follow suit.

An Italian actor-singer and Pavarotti protégé, Altieri has a slight accent that can pass for Transylvanian in a pinch. That’s it.

Sporting the kind of ponytail last seen on 1990s record-company executives, he lacks the necessary predatory charm — or any kind of charm, for that matter. Altieri may well be the least sexy, least scary Dracula ever.

Granted, the 80-year-old script is desperately clunky, larded with thankless exposition and deadly grandstanding. In our age of fanged cool, via “Twilight” and “True Blood,” you’ve got to wonder if the play still has any bite.

Not here.

The cast treads gingerly around the flimsy-looking set — even the library’s books are fake — and displays less heat than New Yorkers discussing the blizzard’s cleanup.

Playing the Dutch-born Van Helsing, Hearn — a Tony winner for the original “La Cage aux Folles” — stops rolling his R’s midway through. As Lucy, one of Dracula’s victims, Emily Bridges (daughter of actor Beau) manages looks of dazed stupor that almost match those in the audience.

The show’s most memorable performance is by John Buffalo Mailer (son of novelist Norman) as Drac’s lunatic henchman, Renfield. At times, he seems to be auditioning for a downtown version of “Hamlet,” then it’s right back to cackling and hissing and crouching. In the show’s best scene, he even crawls down a wall — head first.